How did this ornamental tree imported into Honolulu in about 1813
by Kamehameha the Great's Spanish interpreter and physician Don Francisco
de Paula y Marin become Kona's economic mainstay?

The British warship H.M.S. Blonde brought coffee trees, to Hawaii,
from Brazil in 1825. Chief Boki, Governor of Oahu, had acquired coffee
trees in Rio de Janeiro, on his way back from London. The coffee was
planted in Manoa Valley on Oahu, and from a small field, trees were introduced
to other areas of Oahu and neighbor islands. Hanalei Valley on the North
Shore of Kauai was home to the first coffee plantation. Coffee was established
in the valley in 1842, but was wiped out in 1858 by coffee blight, a
scale insect.

The first coffee was planted in Kona by missionary Samuel Ruggles in
1828 or 1829. These first arabica trees were taken from cuttings planted
on Oahu a few years earlier. Coffee and Kona were a perfect match - Kona
with its rich volcanic soil, hard-working family farmers, and perfect
climatic conditions. Taste Kona's coffee and you'll sense its strength,
the hand-picked quality that sets it apart.

The first written mention of coffee in Kona was noted in 1840. Coffee
was planted in several locations around the Big Island but was best suited
to the Kona district. A few coffee fields are now in production outside
Kona, but the vast majority of coffee is grown right here.

Working these tropical coffee fields has always been laborious
because everything - from planting to picking - is done by hand. Native
Hawaiians and Chinese laborers first worked the large coffee plantations
owned by Caucasians in the mid- to late-1800s. During the 1880s and early
1890s, Japanese immigrants began their coffee legacy in these same Kona
fields.

When the world coffee market crashed in 1899, the large plantations
shifted to small Japanese-owned family farms. As the plantations gave
up, land was divided into small 3- to 5-acre parcels and leased to the
laborers. The cost of these early leases were one-half the crop, and
by 1910, only Japanese coffee farms survived. The first Filipinos arrived
to work the coffee farms about 1920, picking coffee during the season
and returning to the sugar fields in the spring.

Today many Kona farmers can lay claim to being fifth generation coffee
farmers. Coffee is an economic mainstay of Kona, where farmers continue
the tradition and honor their heritage with every harvest.
Kona Coffee Has Royal Ties

It's a rarely recognized fact, but one of the mainstays of the world
famous Kona coffee industry is an institution that has never planted
a coffee tree, never harvested a crop and never roasted a bean. And,
likely, many coffee farmers hard at work in the field give little thought
to the fact that the land from which they gather their harvest has a
direct connection to King Kamehameha the Great, the warrior king who
first united the Hawaiian Islands.

Most of the coffee grown in North and South Kona is cultivated on
land owned by Kamehameha Schools Bishop Estate (KSBE). Kamehameha Schools
Bishop Estate leases tracts to more than 600 farmers in the Kona area
who produce the majority of the region's coffee, plus macadamia nuts,
exotic flowers, avocados, vegetables and fruits. It is the Kona coffee,
though, that reigns as monarch of Kona's varied produce. Average size
of the farms leased from KSBE is seven acres. In all, more than 1,200
acres of KSBE-owned land are now in Kona coffee production.

Some coffee farms leased from KSBE have been in the same family for
four or five generations, since the Estate was created in 1884. The KSBE
charitable land trust was created by Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop,
the last direct descendant of King Kamehameha the Great. The majority
of the lands she inherited are on the Big Island of Hawaii. Pauahi's
husband, banker Charles Reed Bishop, enlarged the land trust when he
purchased the West Hawaii ahupuaa of Kaahauloa and Honaunau. (An ahupuaa
is the traditional Hawaiian land division, a wedge-shaped parcel stretching
from a base along the seashore to a point on the mountain slopes.)

In her Will Pauahi directed that her lands be used to generate income
for the creation and operation of the Kamehameha Schools, and that the
lands not be sold, so that the schools would be supported forever. In
carrying out the terms of her Will, the trustees of the Princess' estate
were instrumental in creating the long­term agricultural leasehold system
which continues to serve both the schools and Kona's coffee growers today.
Kamehameha Schools Bishop Estate owns 295,000 acres of land on the island
of Hawaii. Of that, nearly half has been in agricultural use for more
than a century.

Thompson at the 2004 Kona Culture Festival. I was a judge at the 2004 and
2005 Kona Coffee
Competition ... no, Maria wasn't jealous,
that is the 2004-2005 Kona Culture Festival Queen, Shardae Grace.

KSBE serves 3,000 students at the main campus on Oahu,
and now is in the process of building four new schools, one of which
will be in West Hawaii. KSBE also operates a network of preschools throughout
the islands, and supports a college scholarship program for Hawaiian
students. And all of that is supported in part through the leasing of
land to Kona's coffee growers.

Just a little something to chat about over your next cup of fine Kona
coffee.

Current production on other islands: As of this writing,
there are attempts to revive production on Maui after the Maui Coffee Company
went under. Kauai continues to crank out coffee. And in the districts of
Kau and Hilo on the big island, they are trying to produce coffee. But
the model of coffee farming on the other islands is large plantation/low
elevation/flatland/mechanical harvest model, like Brazil. True Kona coffee
has climactic advatages and soil conditions, but even the highest farms
are already "low elevation" compared to other coffees. I mean, we buy a
coffee from 3200 feet, but most everything in Central America we buy is
over 1200 meters, 3900 feet! That's the lowest grown ... the highest is
boardering on 7000 feet! Take away the average 1500 to 2000 feet altitude
of Kona coffee, take away the special well-draining volcanic soil and mild
climate, and you are not left with much. We have bought the special Moka
variety from Maui because it was very ususual, and have carried Kauai Peaberry
several years ago, but in general these cannot compete with a really good
Kona in olifaction or gustation. I would love to find small-farm production
of quality high elevation coffee, of quality cultivars (like the Kona Typica)
on other islands, and invite anyone to please let me know if there is any,
Thanks -Tom

Kona Coffee Grades:

Kona Extra Fancy
Size:Will not pass through a 19/64" round hole
Moisture Content: 9% to 12%
Defects: 10 or less, full imperfections per lb.
Other Beans: 50 or less, other type beans per lb.
Undersize: No more than 10% by weight

Kona Fancy
Size: Will not pass through a 18/64" round hole
Moisture Content: 9% to 12%
Defects: 16 or less, full imperfections per lb.
Other Beans: 50 or less, other type beans per lb.
Undersize: No more than 10% by weight

Kona Number 1
Size: Will not pass through a 16/64" round hole
Moisture Content: 9% to 12%
Defects: 20 or less, full imperfections per lb.
Other Beans: 50 or less, other type beans per lb.
Undersize: No more than 10% by weight

Kona Prime
Moisture Content: 9% to 12%
Defects: 25% defective beans, by weight.
Included therein no more than 5% by weight sour or black beans.

Some Comments on the Competition from a Judge,
Mainly for the Kona Farmers:

Since I have been one of the four judges in the competition for the last
2 years (and sure hope to continue to be in the future), I wanted to make
a couple comments that farmers might find useful. Be warned, these are
very candid comments ... please don't think I am trying to be a know-it-all.
I don't know jack about coffee farming. But I am trying to offer some thoughts
from my persepctive as a guy who has seen a lot of coffee farms and mills
in a lot of places, including Kona.

First of all, people who grow coffee need to learn
to roast and to taste coffee. It is kinda BS for a farmer to say "I have
the finest coffee" or even to say "it has fine floral character, blah blah..."
and then put out a table of 6 Kona coffees and say "find your coffee here."
How many could do that? How many really, really understand the cup character
of their own coffee? Okay, I admit that is a hard line to take, and a possibly
a tough cupping test. But if I set up a table of a Red Catuai grown at
1000 feet, a Yellow Caturra from 1500 feet, a Kona Typica from Koloko Mauka
at 2500 feet, a Kona Typica from Honaunau/South Kona at 1500 feet, and
a coffee like the Bateman's 3200 feet Typica, you should be able to find
yours, if yours was one of them.

Farmers need to roast and taste their coffee throughtout the crop, from
beginning to end, to taste the different lots, the different grades, separate
the faded from the average green from the opal green. I know, it's a lot
to ask of people who have a lot on their minds already while running a
farm, but it will separate those who just grow cherry to sell, from those
who offer "estate" coffee, from those who offer "estate" coffee and REALLY
know their coffee.

If farmers did this, than the results of the competition would not seem
so random. The fact that last year's winners come in the lower percentile
would make sense, and would not be an insult or mean that their coffee
is bad (it doesn't mean that at all).

The fact is this: the competition is linked to the festival, and it seems
that in most years it happens too early in the coffee season. That may
or may not ever be changed, but what it means is that the competition is
really evaluating who had the best parchment coffee THAT week the samples
were due. Now, you could call this unfair, but you would be calling your
soil, your altitude, your rain and your sun unfair. It's agriculture; there's
always an X factor. You could have the competition Dec 15 or Jan 15 and
have a different set of "winners" for sure. But the agricultural reality
of that X factor, when a coffee peaks for a certain farm, would never go
away. My wish would be that the competition could be in January, and those
who feel their best coffee was in November could simply hold it in parchment,
in climate control, until it is ready to mill and submit to the competition.

Anyway, if you place low in the competition, I mean really really low,
I think you should know why. I think, privately, the judges should be able
to tell you, or write to you, about what we experienced in the coffee.
I would say their were 10-12 defective samples of the 57, ones we found
unanimously defective, and another 5 that some of us found defective, not
all. Cupping is about communication. It's a form of feedback, not a final
judgement. A great, great coffee can be defective because of 1 bad seed,
every farmer knows that. If a coffee was fermenty, phenolic or hard tasting,
if it was dirty tasting, then these are processing defects that can easily
be addressed (if the farmer knows about them). So I hope there would be
a way (it is certainly possible via the web using secure logins) to return
private results to each farmer about their coffee.

Now granted, alot of these results would not be so informative. The bulk
of coffees we cupped are just good, solid Kona coffees, clean, defect free,
but not stand out samples. They might lack body, or acidity, or special
aromatics. What that means to me (usually) is that your coffee is not at
it's peak yet. I mean, if you are at 2000 feet, there is some positive
brightness in the cup, but it has a thin body, and an almost greenish cast
to the flavor, it is too "young". Maybe you were just barely able to get
a sample together of ripe cherry. We can taste this "immature" flavor in
the coffees, and I felt there was a bit more of it that usual this year.
The other thing that made sense to me is the volume of coffee cherry might
adversely affect the cup. Now, this might be bugaboo, but I don't think
trees stressed out with overproduction of cherry, leaves turning yellow,
drooping, are going to be concentrating the usual amounts of compounds
in their seeds that result in the best olifactory and gustatory experience.
Farmers love to see volume, but I am not sure it makes cuppers so happy.

It soure would be nice if less farmes had to rely on wetmilling
and drymilling services. There is newer equipment available that allows
you to be a true "estate", to process coffee from start to finish. Then
again, I realize this is just not possible technically, spatially, economically.
I wish the mills all had electronic color sorting. Some do. Trent does.
I know that the opinion is that, if all the other equipment is working
right, the "electric eye" is not necessary. But I keep getting beautiful
Kona XF or F, and plopped in the middle is a full-on black bean. Do you
know what a full black bean does to a pot of coffee? It will mean one
of the worst coffee experiences of your life, seriously. The machine would
take care of that.

Lastly, many Kona farms are direct marketers of their own coffees. This
is great in order to return the highest price to you for all your work.
But in order to distinguish themselves from others, a lot of sites are
sorta making up stuff about their coffee. What needs to be hammered in
for consumers is altitude, soil, micro-climate, small farm production,
hand-picking, excellent Typica cultivar. When people start up with poetic
"kissed by Pele" or fanciful agriculture ideas like using a trellis
to grow coffee, trying to make associations to viniculture, I don't think
this helps then general effort to get the best prices for all the farms,
and the best recognition to those who farm seriously. I guess I feel like
everyone with low-grown should just sell cherry to go into Kona Blend,
and there should be a real naming convention that communicates the level
of care a farmer puts into a coffee. If you live on your farm year round
or nearly, if you are out trimming and hauling and mowing, if you are hand-pulping
and patio-drying, if you are on an old, traditional farm with some serious
altitude, then I think this deserves some special recognition. The fact
that some estates sell coffee in their estate bags which is comprised of
cherry they bought on the road, and
that competes with you, the small true-estate farmer, I don't think that's
exactly right.

Back to the competition: Judging coffee is tricky, imperfect, but I hope
everyone knows that we do our best. I know the work that goes into producing
that sample, and we give each cup our full attention, going back and forth
between them, bringing back the ones that have potential for the 2nd round,
reranking them for the finals. We have no idea who grew what, all we have
is numbers and samples. We are presented with the parchment, green and
roasted smple to look at, but we don't judge the coffee that way. You don't
cup with your eyes. You use a spoon and your sense of smell and taste.
That's what we do, as best we can, looking for the best Kona coffee, the
best character for Kona: aromatic, floral, sweet, some brightness (acidity),
balance, medium body, delicate, mild, clean aftertaste ... and then hopefully
some other special nuances that are Kona-like in character. That means
if you plant SL-28, or Yemen Moka, or Red Catuai or Catimor, you probably
won't win here, even if your coffee is nice. Now, I like experiments and
as a buyer might be interested in unusual cultivars except the Red Catuai
or Catimor (we like Rita's JBM). As far as the Fukinagwa (not the cut,
but the Liberica root with Typica graft) I am not sure if I could cup the
difference. I do know that the offspring from the graft might lack quality
though and won't cup like the original. Grafter beware!

In 2001 the Rittenhoues planted 900 new trees. The trees
are planted in the “new style” enabling weed
control by mowing and easier harvesting for the pickers.
Today both new and old trees are thriving and producing exceptional
coffee. In it first entry in the annual Kona Coffee Cupping
Competition, Moki’s farm received honorable mention.
In 2004 they received a top spot in the competition!

The new trees soon after planting. I was at the farm this year
and they are 10 - 12 feet tall, a dense coffee forest, as
you see in the background of this picture.

Typical branch on a 100 year old tree at Moki's. No, coffee doesn't
ripen evenly and picker's must make multiple passes to pick
the same tree. That's why good coffee is a lot of work!

Who is Moki?

The name Moki’s Farm comes from a song that Vivian
learned as a child in Hawaii in 1959. 1959 was the year Hawaii
became a state. The song was about Moki and how he would
bring Hawaii’s aloha to the rest of the country.
The “Moki song” became a fixture in the Rittenhouse
family, sung on long car trips, camping trips and to the children.
When the farm was purchased the name Moki’s Farm seemed
natural.

Moki’s Farm sells Estate Coffee. Estate Coffee is
the product of one farm, unmixed with coffee from other farms.
Estate coffee is grown, processed and roasted under the control
of the estate farm. Estate coffee is unique to an individual
farm. Estate coffee is comparable to estate wines, which
are also the unique product of one farm.

The Kona Coffee Council manages the Kona coffee Estate farm
Program. For more information go to the Councils
web site.

You can find this and more
information at Moki's
Farm web site.
They sell roasted Moki's too, but not green...
we have that.